Damage tolerance of nanolayer grained ceramics and quantitative estimation

In order to meet increasing requirement for the evaluation and design of damage tolerance of brittle materials, a simple expression was proposed to estimate the damage tolerance quantitatively using basic material parameters, based on the features of damage tolerance and fracture mechanics. The calculated results from this equation indicated that the damage tolerance of nanolayer grained ceramics was over 10 times higher than that of some brittle ceramics, while glass has the lowest damage tolerance. Therefore, the damage tolerance of various ceramics can be estimated directly using their basic properties data without the necessity of additional tests. SEM examination and finite element simulation showed that the high damage tolerance of the layer grained ceramics was attributed to delamination in grains, interlocking microstructures and crack deflection.